1. Teachings for the New Jerusalem on the Lord

The Entire Sacred Scripture Is about the Lord, and the Lord Is the Word

WE read in John,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and nothing that was made came about without him. In him there was life, and that life was the light for humankind. And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not grasp it. And the Word became flesh and lived among us; and we saw his glory, glory like that of the only-begotten child of the Father. He was full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 5, 14)

In the same Gospel,

Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)

And elsewhere in the same Gospel,

While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light. I have come into the world as a light so that anyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness. (John 12:36, 46)

We can see from this that the Lord is God from eternity and that he himself is that Lord who was born into the world. It actually says that the Word was with God and that the Word was God, as well as that nothing that was made came about without him, and then that the Word became flesh and that they saw him.

There is little understanding in the church of what it means to call the Lord “the Word.” He is called the Word because the Word means divine truth or divine wisdom and the Lord is divine truth itself or divine wisdom itself. That is why he is also called the light that is said to have come into the world.

Since divine wisdom and divine love are one with each other and have been one in the Lord from eternity, it also says “in him there was life, and that life was the light for humankind.” The life is divine love, and the light is divine wisdom.

This oneness is what is meant by saying both that “in the beginning the Word was with God” and that “the Word was God.” “With God” is in God, since wisdom is in love and love is in wisdom. This is like the statement elsewhere in John, “Glorify me, Father, together with yourself, with the glory I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). “With yourself” is “in yourself.” This is why it adds “and the Word was God.” It says elsewhere that the Lord is in the Father and the Father is in him [John 14:10], and that the Father and he are one [John 10:30].

Since the Word is the divine wisdom of the divine love, it follows that it is Jehovah himself and therefore the Lord, the one by whom all things were made that were made, since everything was created out of divine love by means of divine wisdom.

8298. They sought the deep like lead. That this signifies that evils dragged them down to lower things, like weights in the world, is evident from the signification of “the deep,” as being lower things, and the hells in respect to evils (see n. 8279), consequently “to seek the deep” denotes to be dragged down by evils to these lower things. (That the evil sink down by their evils to the hells, like weights in the world, see n. 8279.) It is said “like lead,” because by “lead” is signified evil; above, however, it was said “they went down into the depths of the sea like a stone” (verse 5), because by “a stone” is there signified falsity. Both falsity and evil are heavy, consequently both sink down; but still it is evil which makes heaviness in the spiritual sense, and thus sinks down just as from a weight; but not falsity by itself except from the evil which is in it; for from itself falsity has no weight; but from evil it has its tendency to sink.

[2] Be it known that all metals signify good or truth, and in the opposite sense, evil or falsity. “Lead,” being more ignoble than the rest of the metals, signifies the evil which is lowest, such as is the evil of the exterior natural; but in the good sense it signifies good of the same degree, as in Jeremiah:

They are all stubborn ones of stubborn ones, detractors, brass and iron; they are all destroyers. The bellows grew hot; the lead is consumed by the fire; in vain fusing he hath fused; for the evil have not been pulled away. They shall call them rejected silver, because Jehovah hath rejected them (Jeremiah 6:28-30).

Son of man, the house of Israel is become scoria to Me; all of them are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace; they have become scoriae of silver (Ezekiel 22:18).